Should Developers Perform Your Software Testing Services?

There’s no substitute for skilled developers. They’re the powerhouse behind the product. The chief creation officers. They’re tasked with engineering your product’s architecture, coding the new features that will captivate your users and expanding the market reach of your organization. But, as humans are used to, developers also make mistakes in their pursuit of greatness.

Many companies have their developers working double duty, testing their code before final release. Why? A variety of reasons: lack of an in-house QA team, a tight production timeline or to cut costs that would be spent on dedicated QA engineers.

But is this a sustainable strategy? We don’t think so. Here are a few reasons why:

Developers and QA engineers think differently

Developers are trained to create products -- those that fit specific market needs as well as those that customers didn’t realize they couldn’t live without. They are focused on innovating. It’s a tough, demanding job, and that’s exactly why they should be able to devote 100% of their time to it.

QA engineers are trained to break the developer’s creation. But it’s done in good spirits, and in pursuit of a larger, nobler goal: a stronger, more efficient product. QA testers are trained specifically to perform software testing services, so their eyes are more attuned to the problematic areas that developers may overlook.

An inconvenient truth: everyone’s biased

Being self-critical and finding faults in your own hard work is difficult. For this reason, developers may be hesitant about thoroughly testing their own code and pushing for breakage. While most developers do perform helpful unit testing as they work, full regression testing should also occur prior to release.

Great QA emulates the end user

QA engineers are trained to be objective and critical, much like an end user who is familiar with the product and is eager to use it to its full potential. Testing experts, especially those with domain expertise or past experience in your specific market, are able to treat the product objectively and test accordingly.

There’s always the fine print

Product requirements may not always provide the clearest instruction for the development team. To ensure that the code is in line with the listed requirements before release in the live domain, a QA team should be available to check and double-check.

QA yields domain and integration expertise

Unit testing works great for ensuring that a certain piece of code is functioning correctly, and it’s always helpful when developers perform these tests. However, that same piece of functioning code may not integrate correctly with the full system. This is what QA engineers are trained to recognize and fix.

When paired together, development and QA teams complement each other perfectly. How can you use a QA partner to streamline your entire software development lifecycle?Grab our free whitepaper below to find out!

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Written by QA Experts

QASource Blog, for executives and managers, shares QA strategies, methodologies, and new ideas to inform and help effectively deliver quality products, websites, and applications.

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